Wednesday, March 22, 2006
The armed Basque separatist organisation “ETA” (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) has announced a permanent cease-fire as of Friday 24th March 2006. A video release by the organization shows three people seated at a table in front the ETA emblem, faces covered with masks and wearing Basque berets. The video was broadcast on Spanish national television and distributed to local Basque media outlets.
ETA, Western Europe’s most active separatist group, seek to create an independent state covering Spain’s northern Basque Country and parts of south-western France. The group broke two ceasefires in the 1990s.
For over three decades the armed organisation has waged a violent campaign for independence for the seven regions in northern Spain and south-west France that Basque separatists claim as their own. ETA, whose name stands for Basque Homeland and Freedom, originated in the 1960s as a student resistance movement bitterly opposed to General Franco’s repressive military dictatorship.
ETA is considered by Spain, France, the European Union and the United States to be a terrorist organization, with more than eight hundred killings attributed to it.
A permanent end to hostilities by ETA was a condition set by the Socialist Government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero for beginning negotiations with the organisation.